Last weekend we announced the finalists for the podcast awards. I had a crew of people going to each podcaster's website and checking a few benchmarks. I was AMAZED at how many people didn't have what some people eel are the “basics” of podcasting. These include:

A RSS feed that is visible for people who use an Android Device

An iTunes icon to make it easy to subscribe to your podcast

An email address or form to use to contact you

A Media player so I can go to your website and start listening in one click

A download link – so I can take it with me if I want

Social Media icons to help people share your content

Show notes to help attract search engines

A VALID RSS feed

Here is what I found

32.8% of nominees had no email address or form to contact them (twitter, facebook, Google+ do not count)

26.3% had no iTunes icon on their website.

and yet what do people want most? Comments and interaction from their audience, and more subscribers/downloads……

25.3% had no way to download the file

23.5% of podcasters nominted for a podcast award did NOT have an RSS icon/link on their website (on the front page)

there is more to podcasting than itunes. Give people and RSS so they can subscribe on whatever they want to use.

22.8% of the nominees had an RSS feed that was invalid

it doesn't do any good to have a feed if it doesn't work (case in point soundcloud)

17.2% had no visible player to click play when you land on their website (many you had to dig to find one)

14.4% Had no social media to share you content

One other things that were interesting. Some of the top podcasts of 2014 (Serial, Startup, and Reply All) have no iTunes buttons on their website. Yet they dominate.